Mark Wilson kept his cool after slow start Sunday at Humana Challenge

LA QUINTA — As the holes rolled by Sunday and the birdie putts that his opponents were making weren't falling for him, it would have been understandable if Mark Wilson had grown frustrated and impatient in the Humana Challenge in partnership with the William J. Clinton Foundation.

“It was a challenge, but I guess my experience helped me in this situation knowing that, hey, there's a lot of golf left, maybe I want to make my birdies at the end of the round,” the 37-year-old Wilson said. “And thankfully that's what I did this time.”

After playing the first 10 holes of his fourth round with nine pars and one bogey — the kind of scoring that usually plummets a player down the leader board in the Humana — Wilson still found himself just one shot off the lead of a red-hot John Mallinger and Wilson's playing partner, Robert Garrigus. That's when the experience of Wilson, with four career titles entering the week, kicked in.

Wilson birdied the 11th hole and holed a bunker shot for another birdie on the par-3 12th hole. Down the stretch, Wilson made a critical 10-foot birdie putt on the par-4 16th and the winning 14-foot birdie putt on the par-5 18th.

Wilson's calmness and experience showed in other ways through the winning week. On Saturday, when other players saw their scores soar because of winds that eventually caused play to be suspended, Wilson played 15 holes at La Quinta Country club in 5-under par. Much of that scoring came when conditions were calm, but he didn't give shots back during the damaging winds.

“I've seen all kinds of different conditions like that. I grew up on a golf course that was a very windy golf course. And I think just playing within yourself,” Wilson said. “I've learned to not hit the same shots you would in good conditions. I was hitting a lot of low runners and hitting some weird clubs from yardages that didn't make sense just because I wanted to keep the ball out of the wind.”

Wilson even showed experience in how he dealt with the long day Sunday that included a four-hour break between the end of his third round and the start of his fourth round.

“I'm staying at my in-laws who live at Ironwood in Palm Desert, so I went back there and played with the kids and hung out a little bit, helped my wife get the kids ready for school today, well, the tour day care, I guess we call it school,” Wilson said. “And then I was on my way at about 10 o'clock, knowing I was going tee off around noon.”

Five hours after that tee time, Wilson was the winner of the Humana Challenge and its $1,008,000 first-place check. And he had shown how experience can win a golf tournament.